Waitress gets fired after Facebook rant about bad tipper

A waitress at a pizza joint in Charlotte, N.C., was fired from her job after she ranted on her Facebook page about a couple of bad tippers, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Ashley Johnson, 22, was working at Brixx Pizza when a couple came in for lunch and stayed for three hours, which forced her to stay long past her shift’s end. The couple left only a $5 tip, which Ms. Johnson thought was a measly amount:

Ms. Johnson did what most folks who need a good rant do nowadays. When she got home, she went on Facebook. “Thanks for eating at Brixx,” she wrote, “you cheap piece of s— camper.”

Two days after, her manager called her in, showed her a copy of her Facebook comments and told her she was being fired because she broke company policy against criticizing customers. Brixx Pizza also has a policy against casting the restaurant in a negative light on social networks.

Ms. Johnson apologized for her bad judgement:

“It was my own fault,” she said. “I did write the message. But I had no idea that something that, to me is very small, could result in my losing my job … I lost my job because of a Facebook status. Even a week later, that’s still a lot to get your mind around.”

An employment lawyer says the Internet gives people a false sense of security:

If you say something on social networks that puts your employer in a negative light, “that’s not very different than an employee standing on a corner and holding a sign or screaming it. It’s public, and it’s out there for the world to see. Individuals can forget that it is a very public forum.”